Purpose and values

Delivering legal certainty in a changing world

Our shared values guide how we conduct our relationships with one another and our stakeholders:

We strive for excellence, to deliver fantastic client service

We respect each other, supporting our people and embracing diversity

We are leaders, empowered, entrepreneurial and encouraged to take initiative, embracing new ideas

We act with integrity, not just doing things right but doing the right thing

We are one team, united, inclusive and collaborative, delivering the whole firm to clients

In a firm of more than 460 partners and 5,200 people across 30 offices, how do we foster this culture and leadership?

One direction

Most of our partners across the world own the firm; they are the firm’s leaders and its managers. Our strong sense of common values and purpose ensure they are all pulling in the same direction.

Shared principles, strong governance and firmwide decision-making support the firm. For example, when identifying future leaders, we look for people who embody the firm’s values, whatever their background. We discuss our vision in depth at leadership training courses and in our annual appraisal and performance measurement sessions. And our “lockstep” profit sharing structure motivates partners to make decisions for the benefit of the whole firm.

Initiative and innovation

The nature of our work means we often find ourselves creating a path through unexplored territory. Innovation is an important part of our offering to our clients, but it also creates challenges. How do we make sure our people have the confidence to try new things? And how do we encourage innovation while expecting technical excellence and ensuring prudence?

We believe in creating an open working environment where people understand that there is room for honest mistakes and that learning from them is part of being an innovative firm.

Sustaining our culture

One of the responsibilities of being a global firm is to make sure our clients and people receive the same experience of Linklaters everywhere in the world. To make that a reality, we have developed and consistently reinforce our strong culture.

Our values form the building blocks of our culture. To sustain it, everyone in the firm – from the most senior to the most junior – needs to live these values. We support them through our global induction and training programmes and the firm's leaders are expected to refer to them in our decision making processes.